


The Human Error.

by VictoryCandescence



Category: Frankenstein - Nick Dear, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Crossover/Fusion, Friendship, Isolation, Love, M/M, Romance, grey morality, mild violence, questionable science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 02:31:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1328605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoryCandescence/pseuds/VictoryCandescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.</i><br/>― Mary Shelley's <i>Frankenstein</i> (adapted)<br/> <br/>A <i>Sherlock/Frankenstein</i> fusion, in which one is satisfied, and indulgence goes unneeded.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Human Error.

**Author's Note:**

> Please be advised that there are descriptions in this story that might be triggering to anyone who is actively squicked out by body horror or things of that nature. (It is based on _Frankenstein_ , after all.) Not _very_ graphic, but better safe than sorry. Also note that there is a very brief moment of suicidal contemplation. If there are any other warnings you feel should be mentioned, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Thanks for reading.

  
◐

The war, it was said, had changed him. He returned to his home a different man: colder, quieter. Whatever he’d been through there had disturbed him profoundly. He walked with a hitch to his step and needed the aid of a crutch, though the rumour was that he’d been run through the shoulder and not the leg. He kept to his rooms, not even coming down for meals, and his sister shouted and fretted to no avail. All she could do was keep him in paper and ink, as all he seemed to do was write, though what she did not know, as he would give anyone who wished to read his work a very dark gaze indeed.

  
◐

Somewhere in the barren, remote hills of the countryside where all that ever grew was the volume of rain and the depth of despair, sat a decrepit stone house that no one ever approached. Haunted, they would say. Strange smells emanated from it, odd flashes of light and anguished cries, and other noises that could not be described.

And then one day it all stopped, the mysterious caretaker in his black cloak and uneven limp had left in the night not to return. Nine long months the house, once so unnaturally active, now sat unnaturally still.

Then: quiet cries, an occasional howl. A wounded man, perhaps one with a sickened mind that had trespassed unknowingly upon that unlucky place seeking warmth from the winter wind. No one truly knew; no one wanted to know.

  
◐

_I am,_ it thought without words. _I am._

Its mouth opened and its lungs drew breath. It moved, writhing until it learned the way its muscles moved beneath its patchwork skin, until its borrowed blood wended its way through its sutured veins. It felt the cold, hard stone beneath its hands and feet, sniffed at the musty air.

Its eyes opened.

It taught itself to see.

In doing this, it _became_. It found the doctor’s notes left to lie in the haste of his exit, looked upon them until they began to have meaning. It learned that it was a _he_.

That he was an abomination, not a natural being – _inhuman_. A chimera raised from hell.

 

◐

More beast than man, perhaps he was – and as driven by instinct as either. The abandoned stone house was enough shelter from the howling winds and ice-sharp rain, but he still needed to assuage his hunger. Moving about in the light of day was to invite himself to be burnt and beaten, to be bloodied and sent running by loud angry voices and prayers to send him back to the place of demons from which they said he’d come. He learned to be wary, to observe everything around him in avoidance of harm, learned the secret hidden places he might hide from the wrath of those who hated what they did not understand. His twisted face, his gnarled skin, his long uneven limbs. And yet in spite of this he taught himself to move with care, perhaps even something approaching grace, in spite of what he had been given as his transport.

So out into the cold in cover of night he would skulk, stealing a sick, hapless chicken from a coop or some lame furred thing too weak to outrun him. His heart stuttered when he would snap their necks, feel the struggle of their tiny lives go limp beneath his hands. He felt like howling in despair, wondering not if but when someone would come along to do the same to him – a necessary slaughter, to cull his imperfection from the world, though he doubted it would be so lucky as to be given to him in mercy, rather more likely in vicious fear.

One night he came upon a patch of loose black earth that had blossomed up fragrant, crisp greens. He dug his fingers into the earth and ripped up the roots, some of which were thick and clean tasting, more satisfying than half-raw meat to gnash his lopsided teeth into.

Then: a light, a halted movement.

“You there,” said a voice, and the creature’s hackles tensed, its dirt-streaked fingers curling into the claws he didn’t have, ready to take on the beating other men’s voices always brought. “Come here, let me see you.”

The creature tried to hide himself, but the man moved slowly, made soft noises. He did not carry a weapon.

A monk, he said he was, a man of knowledge and God, of strictures and silent solitude. He ushered the creature into his dwelling, gave him a place by the fire. Kept his distance.

He returned again every few nights, and the monk would always leave the door ajar for him. He counted it a safe place, stored it away in his mind as such.

“You pitiful thing,” he would say, and his pity was not hatred, though it hurt in a different way. Still, the creature was grateful – Brother Mycroft gave him food and warmer clothing, taught him to hide his hideousness well enough to escape the scrutiny of others. He afforded the creature other kindnesses as well: when he would obey the orders of the monk he would be permitted to read, any books he wished to. His comprehension expanded, though it was a bittersweet evolution. It only made him more aware of how alone he was, and how that could never be permitted to change.

“Stay silent and hidden,” Brother Mycroft would counsel him, “And live out the days of your unfortunate existence in isolation. This is the only way. You are not meant to keep the company of others.”

The creature had so many questions – _why_ s and _what for_ s – but Brother Mycroft would not deign to condone any heresy of his wicked tongue, instead only asking for blind acceptance. The creature felt a heaviness in him, of sorrow and anger and felt it fester into something that felt as if it would rot his heart from the inside out. His skin felt even tighter and more ill-fit than it already was, and he knew feeling this way could not be right.

His contention and resentment grew to the point where Brother Mycroft forbid him from coming near the abbey unless he would obey his command to be isolate, silent and still. The creature could not, and told Brother Mycroft so.

“I owe you thanks, but I cannot abide by what you ask,” the creature told him.

“Then may God have mercy on you, for He will be the only one who will,” Brother Mycroft answered, as cold and stern as ever he was, and shut the door on him for the very last time.

He struck the place from his safe register, willing himself to regard it ever after with suspicion instead.

  
◐

He thought perhaps the loneliness would drive him mad, that all sense might be driven from him by the monotony of his secluded life. Unable to indulge his curiosity or seek answers for all the questions that made his head so full and achy that he felt its stitches might pull apart at any moment, he instead became violent. He made gouges in the walls with thrown stones, ripped the thatch from the roof, watched black bruises bloom under his patchwork skin when he’d throw himself upon the bare floor in despair.

One evening when he thought he might have finally lost all the wits he’d gained, he spotted a man travelling across the empty moor, winding his way unerringly toward the stone house, toward him.

It was the doctor, he realised, could see his face in smears of memory. He had returned to this terrible place, and the creature was filled with such spite that he felt he might spit acid. He was determined to make the man see what a horror he had wrought in giving him life and consciousness, to share the burden of the loathing that made his heart so heavy.

When he finally arrived, the doctor looked with wide, wary eyes upon his creation and the colour drained from his face.

“You live,” he said, his voice tremulous and thin.

“I do,” the creature responded.

“You speak!” the doctor exclaimed, paling further.

“Not only can I speak,” the creature said. “I can think, I can reason. I am clever, far cleverer than most. I have learned, and the foremost thing I have learned is that this makes me fearsome, a thing to be terrified of, to shun. I am a _monster._ ”

The doctor lost the strength in his legs, came crashing down beside the hearth, his crutch clattering on the ash covered stones. The creature advanced, feeling powerful in the face of his doctor’s fear.

“Are you terrified?” he sneered. “Do you not wish to tear me apart at the seams you sewed? Foist each piece of me on the fire and burn me? Put an end to my wretched life? Don’t you find me horrible?”

The doctor found his voice.

“I do not,” he said.

This gave the creature considerable pause.

“What then, do you think of me?”

The doctor stared still, long enough that the creature was sure he had gone mute. Growing frustrated, the creature dropped to his knee, looming over the doctor in his half-prone state.

“Speak!” he barked. “Tell me the truth!”

“I think you’re extraordinary,” said the doctor.

The doctor reached a hand out, and laid it upon the creature’s face. He flinched; he had never been so softly touched by another before. The doctor could not bring his eyes away from him. His anger and frustration ebbed in favour of confusion and skeptical concern.

“That is not what people normally say,” he admitted.

The doctor’s thumb brushed against the ridge of the suture that ran across his cheekbone.

“What do people normally say?”

“‘Piss off,’” said the creature, imitating the cruel way their mouths would twist and spit the sounds. “When they do use words. More often they scream, they curse me and wound me with sharp rocks and burn me with fire. I am a freak.”

“You are not,” said the doctor, and the strength had suddenly come back into his voice. He sat up, grasping the creature by his shoulders. “You are brilliant.”

The creature felt a strange thing begin to happen in his chest. It felt like sadness, but warmer, without despair. He clutched at his heart.

“What is your name?” the doctor asked.

“I do not have one,” the creature said. “No one has ever called me anything but an abomination.”

The doctor’s eyes became shiny, and his mouth a hard line.

“Tonight, you shall choose a name, and tomorrow I will begin to try to make my amends to you. I want to show you that not all humans are cruel, and that you need not be either.” The doctor shifted, kneeling up to bring himself face to face with the creature. His hands were still on the creature’s shoulders; he could feel their warmth bleed through the thin, dirty shirt he wore. “Please forgive me for abandoning you in failure and fear.”

The creature could not speak. The thing that had been happening in his chest had spread upward into his throat, making it feel thick and clogged. All his anger melted away, and for the first time in his memory, he desired to accept this man’s remorse, to smooth his anguish away, to go with him.

“What do I call you, my doctor?”

The doctor smiled. It made the creature feel a happiness he’d never felt.

“My name is John.”

John gave the creature his own cloak and led him out and away from the accursed derelict stone house, keeping close to him the whole way back across the barren moor. The creature could not help but note the doctor had left his crutch behind, and did not seem to miss it.

 

◐

John took the creature to his own home, and up to his bedchamber. There stood a tub in which he let the creature bathe. He stripped him of his rags and doused his grimy skin in warm, clean water. He soothed his sores and bruises with oils and tinctures and mended his rent stitches. His touch was sure and careful, and always so gentle.

“Sherlock,” said the creature.

“Who is that?” asked John.

“I want it to be me,” said the creature. “I was drawn to the name, when I read it a long time ago. I did not know then I was worthy of a proper moniker.”

“Sherlock you shall be, then,” said John, and spilled water from his cupped palms down over Sherlock’s head. “Consider this your christening.”

Sherlock smiled, and it pulled oddly at the stitched-together skin of his face. He had seen many a person recoil at this expression, even Brother Mycroft, as it made his face even more grotesque than it already was. But John did not; John smiled back, and offered him a cloth to dry himself.

He retired that night to a down-filled cot, in a clean white nightshirt, the sweet scent of lavender in his nose instead of the dirt and rot he’d been used to. He fell asleep to the sound of John’s breathing from across the hall, feeling safe and content for the first time in his short life.

 

◐   

Months passed by, and Sherlock stayed in John’s house. He spent his days conversing merrily with John, and when the doctor was away he spent his time reading John’s books, accepting and devouring every new tome John would bring him home. But Sherlock did not venture away from the grounds, and would only go outside at all if his face was covered by one of John’s thick hooded cloaks, even if the sun shone hot above him. If ever there were visitors – John’s sister or his friends in medicine – he would close himself inside the upstairs rooms and refuse to come out until John was alone once more. John bid him to stay and meet them, for they wanted to know who was responsible for the positive change in John’s humour. But Sherlock would remain steadfast in his refusal, so John would only sigh and leave him be. Sherlock did not want any other pair of eyes to be upon him – John did not deserve to attract ire because of his compassion for such a malformed thing as he. And Sherlock could not foresee a day any other person would look upon him with even an ounce of the understanding John had for him.

He still felt lonely most of the time, but being alone was what protected him, and what protected John in turn. He could bear it, that darkening of heart, as long as John came to him and lit it once more with his high, bright laugh and soft eyes and gentle hands. It was already a happier life than any he ever thought he would have.

One afternoon, though, an unexpected visitor caught a sight of him.

Miss Hooper, the undertaker’s apprentice. She had come to seek John’s medical expertise in the proper handling of a particularly diseased corpse. Sherlock was the progenitor of his own mistake though; he’d wanted to hear their conversation, and so listened at the kitchen door. Unfortunately, John did not know he was there and opened it, exposing him to poor Miss Hooper uncovered by any hood at all.

John jumped back in surprise at his presence, having thought he was in his room upstairs as was his custom. Miss Hooper only stared, unmoving. Her face had gone bone white. Sherlock felt her gaze as if it were a palpable weight, and having no place to fast escape it he cowered against the wall, covering his face.

“Make her leave, John!” he bellowed. “I will make her sick, and bring your reputation to disgrace.”

“Sherlock, be calm,” John implored, but Sherlock did not want to be consoled. Did John still refuse to understand he was the only exception?

Miss Hooper, inexplicably, moved closer to him, kneeling down on the floor beside him. Sherlock trembled in shame – if John was not smart enough to be disgraced, then Sherlock was certainly, enough for the both of them. Without warning, Sherlock felt soft fingers curl over his arms and gently yet firmly tug his hands away from his face. The young woman was touching him and still looking at him and remaining so, so near and Sherlock did not know what to do. He flicked his eyes imploringly to where John stood in the doorway watching. His expression was stern, but there was also a kind of contemplative resignation, as though he did not know what this was to result in but wanted to see it happen all the same. He gave Sherlock an almost imperceptible nod.

Miss Hooper’s hands tightened around Sherlock’s wrists, and arrested his attention once more.

“I know your face,” she said. “You were dead.”

Her voice was calm and steady, but there was an unmistakable fear in her eyes.

“I am not dead any longer,” Sherlock said, for he could think of nothing else to say. “John fixed me, brought me back from beyond death into the living world anew. I am remade, and I live because of, and for, John Watson. Do not be indiscreet with the knowledge you hold.”

Miss Hooper let one of his wrists go so that she might place her hand over her own heart, fingers curled into a steadfast fist, as if she were swearing an oath.

“I would not dream of bringing ill will upon Doctor Watson, or anyone he calls a friend.” She let go of the other wrist, but only shifted her hand so that theirs were linked, fingers interlaced. Sherlock looked down at them, then back at Miss Hooper’s face. He found no fear there, only curiosity and concern. She was not afraid, and so it meant Sherlock did not have to be either. “You are quite a strange and interesting creature, if you do not mind me saying.”

“I do not mind, as I should like to say the same of you, Miss Hooper,” said Sherlock.

She smiled, then let go his hand and they moved to standing once more. Once they were both righted, she stepped back to take him in as a whole.

“You are not disgusted by me?” Sherlock asked.

“Not at all,” she said. “Why should I be? You seem to me a man like any other.”

“I am rather exceptional,” Sherlock argued.

“In some respects, I’m sure,” Miss Hooper allowed earnestly. “What I mean is that I am used to seeing the ravages of death. I fancy my work akin to that of Charon – I ferry the remains of the dead to their final resting places. I have seen worse than you.” She suddenly looked chastened by her own words. “Oh! Not to say – that you, I mean...”

“I know what I look like,” said Sherlock, and her fluster was somehow endearing. It was flattering, in a way, that she held him already in high enough esteem that she fretted over insulting him. And at the very least it brought the colour back into her face. Sherlock tried a small smile at her, and she flushed further, not a hint of recoil to be found.

“Molly,” said John, finally breaking his silence and coming to stand with them. “This is Sherlock. He is my friend, and the successful result of a miraculous procedure I shall never again repeat. I am his protector from the ill will of those that might not understand him, but you I know we can trust. He is unique in very many ways, and though his former unfortunate circumstances have made him gruff and wary, he can be quite kind if it suits him.”

Sherlock felt as if his own face might colour at John’s words about him. It was unexpectedly lovely to be referred to as John’s friend, to be given a position in his life in relation to others. The simple word was a talisman to him, made him feel invulnerable to the cruelties of the world. Perhaps being around people other than John might not be as terrible as Sherlock had imagined, not if John would be near to him and call him proudly _friend._

Miss Hooper held a hand out, and Sherlock grasped it with his own, as he’d seen others do. Her skin was softer than John’s, her bones more delicate. It was a fascinating contrast to observe.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Sherlock,” she said. “I hope we might be friends as well now.”

Sherlock tilted his head quizzically and eyed her as she let his hand go.

“Do you really?”

“Of course,” she said. “One can never have too many friends.”

Sherlock smiled at her again, and she returned it. Somewhere deep inside his secondhand heart began the germination of the idea that maybe John needn’t be the only person Sherlock could trust. Perhaps there were others with kind character that could see past his physicality. An interesting thought, indeed.

They saw her out shortly after, and as they waved farewell, John settled his hand at the base of Sherlock’s spine. The weight and heat of his hand was as familiar as it was entirely new, and gave Sherlock many more interesting things to point his thoughts toward that night.

 

◐ 

“Love begets love,” John said, during one of their evenings together, in the privacy of the study, warm hearth and comfortable chairs. “It is the same with cruelty.”

“I know plenty of cruelty,” said Sherlock. “But what is love?”

John laughed, and the sound lifted Sherlock’s spirit.

“That is a very big question.”

“I find no use in asking small ones,” said Sherlock.

“Well, there are different types. There is the love one has for one’s God, or the love of all humans in goodwill. There is the love between parents and children, between siblings, familial fondness. That sort, while pleasant is most often obligatory.”

“Like you and your sister,” Sherlock said.

“Yes,” said John with a wry grin. “Or perhaps between you and the Brother Mycroft you spoke of.”

“Rooted in dependency,” Sherlock observed. “What of the love between you and Doctor Stamford, or Miss Hooper? There is no obligation there.”

“True. It is the love between friends. That is the sort of love one chooses.”

“Like a spouse?”

“Well, friendship is different than romance. Romantic love is in my opinion the most special, the one that brings the greatest pleasures and gives the most satisfying rewards. Often you have one person on whom you bestow such an honour, someone unlike anyone else in your life, someone who is the most significant.”

“Ah,” said Sherlock. “I understand.”

John tilted his head curiously, smiling. “Would you want someone like that?”

“I have someone like that.”

John laughed, an incredulous syllable of joy and surprise. “Do you?”

“Of course. It is you.”

John’s smile faded. Sherlock furrowed his brows.

“Have I got it wrong?”

“I think you do,” John said. “Romantic love has to do with attraction, to personality and physicality. It is like the bond between husbands and wives.”

“But–” began Sherlock, though he stopped when John raised his hands.

“Please, think it through. I am a friend to you, Sherlock; there is no doubt of that. But you are mistaken if you say you love me like that. Now, I do think it’s time for me to retire.”

And with that, John abruptly gathered himself up and left for his bedroom, leaving Sherlock in the study alone with his books and his thoughts.

 

◐

The next day, Sherlock found John in his garden. He bothered not to wear a hood, felt for once no shame for letting his face be bared to the sun and sky. If friendship was a talisman, love was a suit of armour.

“I fail to see the fallacy of my thoughts,” Sherlock said.

John put down the book he was reading next to him on the bench.

“I have read on the subject of love all night long: longing sonnets, happy comedies, tragic odes and merry prose. It intrigues me, as I have never experienced any sort of fondness of that kind – until you.” Sherlock sat down on the wooden bench next to John, who watched him with wary eyes.

“You like my skin,” Sherlock said, and did not miss the way John’s breath caught, the way his eyes went just a bit wider. “You marveled at the systems of my body, how perfectly you fixed them, pieced me together and made me new with such care. You took me in when no one else would, accepted me as I am without turning away in disgust. You teach me, and clothe me and feed me good food.”

“I only try to be a good man,” John said, and his voice was quiet and hidden.

“You are a good man,” Sherlock said. “And that is why I know I love you.”

“Sherlock –” John choked.

“No – you must understand me. I am not an imbecile, or a freak or a monster and you made me realise that. Love begets love, is that not what you said? You have shown me how much you care for me. No brother would be so sensual, no friend quite so protective. I have read that this kind of love is only to be between a man and a woman, but where is the reason for that? In all my reading I have not found a piece of logic that should bar me from loving you. And even if there were, I am not made as any other man, so why should I be beholden to his narrow hallways of thought? My mind is a palace, and you are the architect. Doctor John Watson, I love you because you taught me what love is, and that I was capable of giving it. So who else would I give it to than you?”

After Sherlock had stopped speaking, John still stared. He looked upon Sherlock as he had that very first time, in awe and fright. But this time instead of collapsing, John shifted forward and pressed his lips to Sherlock’s, right there on the bench beneath the shady tree. They were hot, John’s lips, and Sherlock was sure he could feel the pulse of John’s heart in them, the flow of his pure blood, his only and never anyone else’s.

“Oh, Sherlock,” he said when he finally drew himself away, and the sound of his words was warm as a summer breeze, and just as soft. Sherlock dared to rest his hands on John, one curled against the curve of his flank, the other along his leg. He felt the muscles of John’s body tense, beneath the layers of his clothes and skin. But John’s eyes were bright, and he leaned toward Sherlock.

“May I touch you?” Sherlock asked. “I want to see a body that is perfect and whole.”

“Then you will have to see someone else,” said John. “I am scarred and pieced again together just as you are.”

Sherlock shook his head and smiled fondly.

“Then perhaps that is all the more proof.”

“Of what?” asked John.

“That we are made for each other.”

John took one of Sherlock’s hands in his own and rose, pulling him to his feet.

“Where are we going?” asked Sherlock.

“To bed,” said John, “So that I may honour your request. Since you have, of course, made such an admirable and convincing argument.”

Sherlock’s body had never thrummed with such excited energy. He followed on John’s heels into the house and up into his bedchamber, never letting go of his hand.

 

◐       

It was as if John meant to set off every delicate nerve ending he’d awoken with his science, just by lending them his touch. Stripped of waistcoats and trousers, of shirts and stockings and underthings, Sherlock could finally see the whole of his doctor. Though he claimed to be imperfect, Sherlock was sure he’d never see a body he would hold with higher regard.

John ran his small, careful hands over the bared expanses of Sherlock’s body.

“You know every inch of me,” he said. “Why do you seem so beguiled?”

“Because I have never seen you like _this,_ ” said John. It seemed such a vague answer to his query, and yet somehow Sherlock understood exactly what he meant. Under John’s hands, beneath his slender compact frame and the brushes of his lips, Sherlock felt not like an experiment but like any other man, blood rushing to colour the surface of his skins rosy, to stiffen his prick and make his heart beat hard inside the housing of his chest.

Using the same oil that he had used to soothe softness and resilience back into Sherlock’s skin, John slicked his hand and wrapped it, small and firm, around Sherlock’s hardness. He convulsed at the sensation – warm skin and slick oil and delicious friction. He’d grown hard before, woken up from fevered, shapeless dreams feeling still tired, with a patch of wetness beneath him and a hollowness in his chest he didn’t understand. On a few occasions he’d taken himself in hand, or rutted on the dewy morning grass like the animals did to their mates, seeking solitary relief when his skin felt too hot, his cock engorged and aching. But it never felt like this, the unpredictable movement of a sure human hand that wasn’t his, the sweetness of aching for release and knowing it was being given to him as a gift, as an act of love.

John touched Sherlock like something precious, something of immense worth that deserved to be regarded with adoration. He ran careful fingers over the tracks of his stitches, breathed his own breath hotly into Sherlock’s mouth as they kissed, pressed his own hardness, hot and leaking glistening beads of fluid, against Sherlock’s hip. All the while he moaned, sounds that seemed caught someplace between pain and awe that Sherlock found was what pleasure seemed to be. He touched John as well, as if he were compelled, as if he could not stop. His hands smoothed over taut skin, pressed into firm muscle, grasped at supple flesh.

Soon, though, slowness and reverence gave way to fevered compulsion. As if taken by a spell, John suspended himself over Sherlock and pressed them together, his hand working their shafts in tandem. Sherlock stared in awe, stilled for long moments by the intensity of the pleasure John was making emanate from where he touched.

“Do you like it?” John asked, breathless.

Sherlock nodded and meant to answer in the affirmative, but when he opened his mouth the word was transmuted into a long, loud moan. John chuckled; it seemed to be as good an answer for him as any.

“Your hand,” John huffed. “Help me – here, touch me – _ah_ – let us fall together.”

Sherlock wrapped his hand around them as John instructed. His fingers tangled with John’s, the slickness and pressure and heat of it becoming nearly too much to bear, though he wouldn’t have relented for anything.

“John – I – it’s going to happen,” Sherlock said, the coherence of his words muddled. “You’re going to make me do it.”

_“Yes,”_ said John. “Let it happen, I have you, I’m right here with you – _oh!”_

With a last concerted twist of their hands, Sherlock let himself tumble over that precipice on which John had balanced him. His body was run through with a tingling sensation and the tightness that had coiled deep in him unwound in a burst. Sherlock’s orgasm felt so very full, his seed overflowing thick and warm over their interwoven fingers. He revelled all the more in watching John as he spilled his own upon Sherlock’s sutured belly. Never had he felt more alive than that moment, quaking and twitching with the residual sparks of shared pleasure, feeling John pressed tight to him doing the same. His body, which had before caused him nothing but humiliation and pain now thrilled in the exact opposite of the anguish he had known in the past. He writhed on the sheets beneath John, clung to him, luxuriating in the glow that lingered, echoes of a pulse that was at once his and John’s, the same.

“Perfect,” said John, humming it through his lips against the skin of Sherlock’s neck. His voice seemed both very far away and inside Sherlock’s own head, one small word alight on an exhalation, an ember that lit him aflame.

Their heat was one heat, their breath and legs and skin all intermingled, as if John had added himself to the piecework of Sherlock’s body. The finest silk sewn up with the sackcloth to make one whole garment, flawed but bespoke and expertly fit.

 

◐

Afterward they lay together upon John’s bed, the late morning sun washing them in hazy light. Sherlock thrilled to see his skin set against John’s, his mottle and mismatched texture to the smoother golden tautness. Sherlock traced the scars on John’s body with veneration, laid his hand over the gnarl of tissue at his shoulder. Wounds borne of bravery, they were, and in that so much different than his own. But Sherlock could not hate his body as much as he had. Not now, not after it had been shown so much love by John, by the press of his palms and the sweep of his tongue and the nuzzle of his nose. He felt less now like a ragged quilt and more like a sculpture, crafted and carved from one thing to become something else entirely, imbued as much with John’s life as he was with his own.

“Why did you make me?” Sherlock asked.

John thought for a long moment before he answered.

“It is every doctor’s duty to fight back against death,” he said. “And as I am a soldier as well, I wished not only to defer it but to conquer it. I found a way, but in my work I discovered a far more important truth: it is not the place of good human men to dictate the course of nature. I chose to abandon that pursuit, chose the betterment of my soul over the power to conquer death. I knew it was not my place, not the right sort of penance. But I never meant to abandon you, for I never knew all that you would become.”

Sherlock touched his fingers to where John’s heart beat, steady and strong, just beneath the scarred skin of his shoulder.

“You were lonely, too.”

John sighed, laying his own hand over Sherlock’s searching fingers. He caught Sherlock’s mismatched green eyes in his deep blue. There he saw an acknowledgement that was both fond and sorrowful.

“I was. Perhaps that was a reason in itself. In either case, it stands that I am responsible for you, for your life and for your well-being.”

“And now you are responsible for my heart and my soul,” Sherlock said.

Sherlock knew the weight of his words, and John heard it as he spoke. He turned his head as if he could no longer bear to hold their shared gaze, and was quiet for a long time. But he did not shy from Sherlock’s touch, let him pull his body close, fitting them together.

“You can leave me, you know,” said John, in a serious tone Sherlock did not expect. His face was hidden from Sherlock, deliberate in the curl of his body inward, away from him. “I remade you, but you have free will, as any man does. Do not feel beholden to me. If you made the choice to go I would not stop you.”

Sherlock sat up.

“And if I made the choice to stay?”

Now John was compelled to look at him, to meet his eyes once more. In them, Sherlock saw uncertainty, but also the embers of hope.

“You are so brilliant, and yet in your devotion you seem as innocent as a child.”

Sherlock frowned a bit at that, but it only made John smile, and so Sherlock’s heart was inevitably softened.

“You say I am brilliant, and I excel in reason and logic – but you by far surpass me in compassion, in care and in bravery,” Sherlock said. “I am not done learning from you, and I am not sure I ever will be.”

“And I have learned much from you,” said John. “It is most human to be imperfect, to be incomplete, and yet to strive to know as much as one’s mind can hold, to become perfect through the acceptance of those flaws. In that regard you are the most human human being I have ever known. That someone as amazing as you would choose the likes of me is incredible.”

Sherlock furrowed his brow, touching the side of John’s face with infinite fondness. How could he ever think himself any less than the wonder he was?

“I only ever want to be your equal,” Sherlock said. “To be your balance and your completion.”

“And so you shall,” said John, and kissed him again.

  
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End file.
